Conclusion of Memorandum of Understanding for a Capital and Business Alliance, Including the sales of Product Licenses Totaling 300-400 Million Yen to Whale Dynamic

Kudan Inc. (headquarters in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo; CEO Daiu Ko, hereafter “Kudan”), a leading provider of real-time simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) software, is pleased to announce that today it has concluded a memorandum of understanding (the “Agreement”) for a capital and business alliance with Whale Dynamic Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 深圳市惠爾智能有限公司; headquartered in Shenzhen, China; CEO: David Yufei Chang; hereafter “Whale Dynamic”), Kudan’s business partner which develops autonomous driving solutions in China.

Whale Dynamic began providing robots (autonomous delivery vehicle) and associated HD map toolchain toolset products that integrate Kudan’s 3D-Lidar SLAM technology in July 2022, and has been promoting market sales mainly in Chinese market where demonstration of advanced autonomous driving technology led by a public-private system has been rapidly growing (Reference: China’s Whale Dynamic releases products for autonomous driving by integrating Kudan 3D-Lidar SLAM and won a project in Tier1 City in China (July 11, 2022)).

Amid these circumstances, demand for Whale Dynamic’s solutions is increasing in global regions such as Europe and the Middle East along with the expansion of track record in the Chinese market, and with that comes better prospects for opportunities to provide Kudan’s technology in a wider range of Whale Dynamic’s products, such as autonomous driving for passenger cars. As the expansion of sales of Whale Dynamic’s products that integrate Kudan’s technology is expected due to our business progress, we have concluded the Agreement with Whale Dynamic regarding the sales of corresponding product licenses worth 300 million to 400 million yen in total.

In addition, Kudan has concluded the Agreement regarding the investment of 500 million yen in growth capital into Whale Dynamic to accelerate their regional expansion to global and product expansion to autonomous driving, and to strengthen our collaborative structure and joint promotion of the sales of Whale Dynamic’s products and the spread of Kudan’s technology.

Further details and updates regarding this capital and business alliance will be announced separately in the future.

<Reference>
Demo movie about the technology for mapping (vehicle-mounted) and robots (autonomous mobile vehicle)

For more details of this Agreement, please check our IR news and the explanatory material.

Notification of Conclusion of MOU for a Capital and Business Alliance, Including the sales of Product Licenses Totaling 300-400M Yen to Whale Dynamic

Explanatory material on the conclusion of a MOU for a capital and business alliance, including 300-400M yen sales of product licenses to Whale Dynamic

About Whale Dynamic Co., Ltd.
Whale Dynamic is a fast-growing autonomous driving technology company in Shenzhen, China, focused on autonomous driving and intelligent traffic applications. The company holds many fundamental technology patents in vehicle autonomy, from the fields of multi-sensor fusion perception, spatial-temporal synchronization, vehicle embedded system, HD mapping, centimeter level localization and others. Its technology has been widely used by many transportation providers, tier1 companies, universities, and other institutions. Unlike most AD solution companies which only retrofit passenger vehicles for autonomy, Whale Dynamic has used its existing full-stack passenger vehicle autonomy technology in self-developed driverless autonomous vehicles, and secured rich operational use cases by sophisticated design and extensive road testing.
For more information, please refer to Whale Dynamic’s website at http://www.whaledynamic.com

■Company Details
Name: Whale Dynamic Co.Ltd.
Representative: CEO and Founder David Yufei Chang

About Kudan Inc.
Kudan is a deep tech research and development company specializing in algorithms for artificial perception (AP). As a complement to artificial intelligence (AI), AP functions allow machines to develop autonomy. Currently, Kudan is using its high-level technical innovation to explore business areas based on its own milestone models established for deep tech which provide wide-ranging impact on several major industrial fields.
For more information, please refer to Kudan’s website at https://www.kudan.io/.

■Company Details
Name: Kudan Inc.
Securities Code: 4425 (TSE Growth)
Representative: CEO Daiu Ko

■For more details, please contact us from here.